Pacer Crazy

Yes! Yes, Your Honor, I admit it: I’m in love with the Indiana Pacers and I hate everyone and anyone who gets in their way.

The love affair started in childhood (what doesn’t?). Daddy was a perplexing man (whose wasn’t?), but on many occasions, he took my brother Stephen and me to the Fairgrounds Coliseum in Indianapolis to see black men with big Afros and white men with long sideburns, all of them wearing short shorts and playing ball for the Indiana Pacers.

The league was called the American Basketball Association, but they might as well have put Ringling Brothers somewhere on the logo. They used a red, white and blue basketball and came up with kooky innovations like a 3-point shot and a slam dunk contest at the all-star game.

The Pacers squared off against teams like the Virginia Squires, Utah Stars, Miami Floridians, and the dreaded Kentucky Colonels, almost as hated as those dreaded Kentucky Wildcats, who (along with Purdue, who broke Scott May’s arm late in the regular season), cheated the unbeaten Hoosiers outta an NCAA title in 1975.

I Couldn't Possibly Be Gay, Could I?

At superficial glance, many people assume I’m some sort of athlete.

Perhaps that’s because they see my skin color (black), my body (six-foot four, two hundred plus pounds), my voice (deep when I wanna be) and think of stereotypes.

People think that a black man who fits my casting description is supposed to be warming up for Super Bowls or shooting jump shots in the NBA, and so I couldn’t possibly be gay … could I?

See how I like to shock the world and teach people a lesson or two as a homo on a mission, now and forever at Randy Boyd's Blocks.

Essentially Essex

Essex Hemphill is the late poet whose musings about race and sexuality resonate well into the 21st century. Perhaps the best evidence of his legacy is the numerous times his name appears in online profiles under favorite authors.

All the more reason it gives me great pleasure to digitally preserve my 1992 Q&A with the poet in Interview with Poet Essex Hemphill.

Halftime Show

The following essay appeared in the April 2008 issue of Poz Magazine.

Twenty-three years ago, at the age of 23, I was a closeted cheerleader who’d just graduated from UCLA and discovered I was HIV positive.

Recently, I celebrated my 46th birthday. The scoreboard now reads: half a life with HIV, half a life without.

In the first half, I felt like a big black unathletic fag, a disappointment to my sports-loving family. In the second half, I evolved into an openly gay author living with AIDS, using the gift of writing to tackle homosexuality in sports.

The second half has been much more enjoyable and educational. I learned that my mom can sometimes be right: She never stopped dreaming of medical advances keeping me alive.

I learned I can survive nightmares, hospitalizations, coworkers not eating my birthday cake because an openly positive man blew out the candles. I learned friends don’t always stick around. I learned I could love a dog beyond all measure.

The same spirited moves I’ve done since childhood—the dancing that made me a cheerleader (and fag) —are now called “street dancing,” a cool unisex craze for kids today.

The “young, gay and horny” behavior that made me “sick” to my peers now gets equal time with the “young, hetero and horny” stuff on MTV.

By living long enough to witness subsequent generations, I see their behavior in my own and think: The first half of my life, I lived in a world where I felt wrong for being who I am. The second half, I’ve realized: There’s nothing wrong with who I am, and the world is catching up to understanding that same idea. Now back to the game.

Interview with Ryan Phillippe

In 1992, One Life to Live dared to tell the biggest "gay" storyline in the history of daytime television. At the center of that story was a young gay teenager, played by a 17-year-old newcomer named Ryan Phillippe.

Take a trip back to a special, more innocent time and see how history was changed forever, When Ryan Phillippe Had One Gay Life to Live.

Homophobia in the NBA: Who’s To Blame?

Some are blaming the brutality of the game. Others are blaming the mentality of the athletes. Some are blaming testosterone. Still others are blaming man-made facilities, like locker rooms.

These days, a lot of athletes are good at blaming their behavior and attitudes on things outside their control. The behavior in this case: killing another man’s spirit in the name of preserving one’s own manhood.

That’s what homophobia does. It kills the spirit. It tells little boys with big sports dreams that their big sports dreams are worthless unless they suppress what comes natural to them (regardless of how natural or unnatural it comes to anyone else).

"Please stop killing the spirits of little boys."

You can call someone a fag a lot of ways. You can call them a fag aloud. Or you can deny them access to any particular slice of the American Dream, the one that’s supposed to be pre-ambled with “liberty and justice for all” and “all men are created equal.” Either way, and no matter who and what you blame, you’re still calling that someone a fag. You’re still telling them they are worth less than you. No matter all else, you’re still killing their spirit.

Dear Danny Fortson: when you tell the press that having a gay person on your team “wouldn’t be a good idea” and justify your comments by saying athletes still have a grade-school mentality, not only are you not speaking highly about the mental capacity of your teammates, you’re abusing some kid’s spirit by telling him he’s not a good enough for your world, no matter his athletic ability, because he is worth less than you.

Dear Robert Parish: when you reason that testosterone causes the macho (read: intolerant) and chauvinist environment in the locker room, you’re reasoning that it’s okay for men to behave the way they behave because of an agent in their bodies and chauvinism (which is acceptable?). You’re also saying: screw you, little boy with big sports dreams, grown men can’t help themselves from being heartless souls who treat you like crap and that’s just the way it is. You and your dreams aren’t important enough for me to imagine a better-case scenario or effect change.

Dear Doc Rivers: when you reason away the homophobic reactions of NBA players by saying “guys are brutal,” you’re condoning brutality. Against other human beings. Because guys are brutal, little boy with big sports dreams, and that’s just the way it is. You and your dreams aren’t important enough for me to imagine a better-case scenario or effect change.

Dear NBA, NFL, MLB, et al.: when you cite all the negative reasons why an athlete can’t be himself at all times, you’re telling the little boys and girls of this country that their sports dreams don’t matter, that preserving an environment encouraging behaviors and attitudes unacceptable in the majority of American settings is more important than the spirit of any boy or girl who dare to dream of finding their soul through sport while also daring to dream of loving another of the same gender. You are making a choice to prejudge the situation and the person without a single thought to that person’s ability, that person’s dreams, that person’s feelings. The very definition of killing the spirit.

Dear professional athletes: please stop killing the spirits of little boys and girls in this country by telling them their dreams are worthless. Please give us all a chance to make our sports dreams come true. It will only become a nightmare if we all think the worst and act the worst. If we do the reverse, it just might be a dream come true for all.

• This article originally appeared on Outsports.com in November, 2005

When Essex Speaks

Essex Hemphill is the late poet whose musings about race and sexuality resonate well into the 21st century.

Perhaps the best evidence of his legacy is the numerous times his name appears in online profiles under favorite authors.

All the more reason it gives me great pleasure to digitally preserve my Q&A with this literary legend in Interview with Poet Essex Hemphill (1957-1995).

When Will the Walls Come Tumbling Down?

Will there ever be a time when black athletes on the down low can be on the up high?

I examined the possibilities in the following article, which appeared on Outsports.com on March 15, 2002.

When Will the Walls Come Tumbling Down?

In November 1991, Earvin “Magic” Johnson came out on the Arsenio Hall Show. Came out as a straight person, that is. Days before, Magic had announced his HIV status to the world and retired from basketball.

With the world still reeling, the Lakers star with the billion-dollar smile sat on his buddy’s studio couch and promptly reiterated something he had already reiterated in Sports Illustrated: “I’m far from homosexual. Far from it.”

Arsenio’s audience went ballistic, cheering, pumping their fists in the air, howling, “woof, woof, woof!” You’d think Magic had just wiped out famine or discovered a cure for breast cancer. Nah, he had just reassured the straight world that, although one of its biggest sports superstars was infected with the deadly virus, he was still a Man.

"Whenever an athlete is backed into a corner, he comes out with those ultimate fighting words: faggot."

During that same week, longtime Lakers announcer Chick Hearn looked a TV camera dead in the eye and warned, “Don’t think he got it the wrong way.” Translation: Magic was a slut, a ho and a freak, but he was a Man. There is a right way to get HIV and a wrong way.

White Boy Exposes Black Girl's Breast!

Once upon a time, America went bonkers, all because of a certain wardrobe malfunction.

Here's what this writer wrote about that finer moment in American history in Bad Week on the Boob Tube, as it appeared on Outsports.com on February 12, 2004.

Bad Week on the Boob Tube

Damn rock stars. Just when you let down your guard and put your “lock up your daughters” attitude towards all musicians on the back burner, they go and desecrate the greatest game on the greatest day.

How dare that skinny blond punk and that fading Jackson diva infiltrate sex into the Super Bowl? Sex is only for the commercials. Only then should we give our attention to Hooters and erections, and whether or not Levitra, or Cilias is a better Viagra than Viagra.

When Ryan Phillippe Had One Gay Life to Live

Nowadays, gay characters on daytime soap operas fall in and out of love, and even--can you imagine such a thing--kiss!

Roughly twenty years ago, such was not the case. In 1992, One Life to Live dared to tell what is still the biggest "gay" storyline in the history of daytime television. At the center of that story was a young gay teenager, played by a 17-year-old newcomer named Ryan Phillippe.

Below is a reprint of my article, "One Gay Life to Live," which originally appeared in the August 28, 1992, issue of Frontiers Magazine.

One Gay Life to Live

With little fanfare and even less protest, this has been the summer of gays on television ... relatively speaking. One the non-entertainment side, there was the entertaining Democratic National Convention, where the presence of gays reverberated throughout the week and Bob Hattoy told the world, “Yes, I am gay and I have AIDS.”

Elsewhere, the Fox network included a gay man in the mix on Melrose Place, its new Beverly Hills 90210 clone. So far, the character of Matt (played by Doug Savant) is underdeveloped, but he is gay and he is present.

Over on MTV's The Real World, one of the seven people picked to live in a Manhattan loft for three months and have their lives taped, bad hair days and all, turned out to be gay. Norman talked about his sexuality, fell in and out of love with another man and pursued his painting, all to the acceptance by his loft-mates.

“It was a really emotionally charged day,” says Ryan Phillippe, the 17-year-old actor.

But the most ground-breaking experience for gays on entertainment TV this summer might be what's going on weekday afternoons on ABC's daytime drama, One Life to Live. For it is here, in the fictional town of Llanview, that gay issues are taking center stage.

Soapdom has featured gay characters twice in the past--a lesbian on All My Children in 1983 and a gay man on As the World Turns in 1988--but those plots were minor in scope compared to One Life's all encompassing tale.

Almost daily for the last few months, the show has featured such scenes as a teenage boy wrestling with coming out; a worried mother letting her guard down long enough to ask her minister if homosexuality is a sickness; an upstanding matron (who has been the rock of the show for over 20 years) informing others that gays are not automatically child molesters; and a straight teenager sticking up for his gay best friend when his homophobic father orders them not to see each other again.

"Billy Douglas (Ryan Phillippe) found he could no longer contain his gay feelings."

“I want to change people's minds,” says Linda Gottlieb, the executive producer of One Life to Live who came on board a year ago to revive the New York show's sagging ratings.

Change people's minds? Well, at the very least, Gottlieb's making them think.

The story began in late spring when the Rev. Andrew Carpenter (Wortham Krimmer) received a permanent visit from his father, Gen. Sloan Carpenter (Roy Thinnes). Instantly the two were at odds, especially over the general's denial that his other son, William, was gay and died of AIDS.

At the same time, 16-year-old Billy Douglas (Ryan Phillippe) found he could no longer contain his gay feelings and went to Rev. Carpenter seeking guidance. Carpenter--whom the audience knows as straight--was supportive, but their friendship ignited a rumor that he had made sexual advances to Billy.

"The town's new police commissioner is trying to root out gay and lesbian cops."

From there, a wave of hysteria engulfed the denizens of Llanview. Billy's ultra-conservative parents went after Rev. Carpenter, who denied the seduction charges but refused to declare his sexuality on the grounds of privacy.

At first Billy was traumatized into silence; eventually, he found the courage to clear the reverend (without coming out himself), but it was too late to stop the town's homophobic witch hunt.

Now, rocks are being hurled through windows, “fag” has been spray-painted on the reverend's door, and petitions and protests for and against gay rights are the norm in Llanview.

Most of the town's “good” characters have been decidedly pro-gay, but the show is not without its share of realistic, anti-gay sentiment from the general, Billy's parents, and others. For example, the town's new police commissioner is trying to root out gay and lesbian cops by getting fellow officers to name names and firing those who won't cooperate.

“What happens if my son or daughter were gay? Do I have enough love in my heart to deal with it?”

The story and most of its ripples will culminate at the end of August when several characters, including Rev. Carpenter and Billy, visit the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The outdoor scenes were shot on location in New Vernon, N.J., using over 250 real panels from the Quilt along with a fictional panel for the character of the reverend's brother.

“It was a really emotionally charged day,” says Ryan Phillippe, the 17-year-old actor who portrays Billy Douglas. “You couldn't turn around without seeing someone with tears in their eyes.”

In an age where protests against positive gay roles on television are heard louder than the roles themselves, it's somewhat shocking that One Life to Live has decided to go this far out on a limb.

But Linda Gottlieb, who hired gay psychiatrist Richard Isay as a consultant, never wavered from her intent. “We wanted to make people understand that gays are people just like their own children, that they come in all shapes and sizes,” she says.

"Phillippe says he now has gay friends and a lot more compassion for those different than him."

Thus the character of Billy was introduced as the captain of the swim team before the audience learned he was gay.

“I hope people will also begin to understand it from the point of view of the parents,” adds Gottlieb. “What happens if my son or daughter were gay? How would I react, do I have enough love in my heart to deal with it?”

Much to Gottlieb's surprise, ABC has been very supportive. “We were all sort of girding our loins to do battle with the network and sponsors and they've been quite superb. Our ratings are up and fan mail was up 500 percent last month.”

The content of the mail? “Overwhelming pro.”

Phillippe himself has received in the neighborhood of 600 letters (40 percent from gays and lesbians) and all but one has been positive. The numbers are encouraging, if not necessarily the content.

“A lot of kids write and say things like they're giving themselves to the end of the summer to figure out whether they want to live or die,” says Phillippe. “I'm talking some really heavy stuff. They're contemplating suicide and they're asking me how they should deal with it.”

“I don't think many people understand the power of what One Life to Live is doing right now.”

Phillippe seeks out professional advice on how to write back, often sending along information and hotline numbers. If there's a bright side to the letters, it's that their authors now have someone to reach out to; many of his older gay fans say they wish they'd had Billy as a role model when they were young.

It's what makes Phillippe glad he accepted the role earlier this year, just as he was graduating high school in New Castle, Delaware.

"It's been nothing but a positive experience,” says the straight actor, who admits he hesitated about taking on a gay role. “I grew up in a Baptist school so I led a fairly sheltered life and I didn't know exactly how to deal with homosexuals 'cause I never had to. I never had any as friends and I couldn't understand how somebody could feel like that.”

But that's all changed in a few short months, thanks in part to the show. Phillippe says he now has gay friends and a lot more compassion for those different than him. “I've learned that humankind as a whole needs to have more understanding for others' needs and if you can't understand someone, that shouldn't give you reason to ridicule them. That's what I hope our audience gets out of the show because that's what I've gotten out of playing the role.”

“I don't think many people understand the power of what One Life to Live is doing right now,” says Chris Fowler, acting executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in Los Angeles. “It's a tremendously innovative storyline for daytime television. Gay and lesbian teens are seeing someone just like them coming to grips with his sexuality.

“Linda Gottlieb deserves quite a bit of support from the gay and lesbian community,” adds Fowler, citing inside reports of network nervousness and the usual barrage of anti-gay phone calls, which is why, he stresses, the gay community needs to write to ABC in support of the show.

At least until the storyline reaches its upcoming climax, One Life to Live will continue to bring gay issues every weekday afternoon to over five million viewers. As for the future, Linda Gottlieb says the character of Billy is so successful, he'll remain on the show as “a teenager who happens to be gay.”

But what about giving him a love interest? “That'll really rock 'em,” she jokes. Gottlieb will make no promises, but adds, “You never know. If you have only one life to live in the media, you might as well do it on an important story.”

Bucky the Bear and the Albuquerque Newsboy

"Bucky the Bear and the Albuquerque Newsboy" originally appeared in the April 24, 1992, issue of Frontiers Magazine.


“Oh, and I can't wait to see Basic Instinct,” my friend Jeff cooed excitedly over the phone.

Jeff is black and gay like me, though he is not politically conscious. He rarely thumbs through a gay publication, was barely aware of AB 101 and couldn't begin to tell you which politicians want to put us away. Yet every Oz needs its good-natured fairies who are adept at spreading good cheer, and he is a true friend.

This, however, was difficult. “You would see that?” I bristled.

“Don't tell me you're one of those,” he said, informing me that all the uproar concerning gays in the movies was the sole product of “a bunch of rich white gays who have nothing better to do with their time and who want every film to portray them as perfect, like in Longtime Companion,” while they don't care one bit about blacks, which is why they didn't complain about Paris Is Burning.”

“You could just go to a doctor or something and say: 'I wanna start liking girls.”

I countered by saying that the world views each and every one of us as Jeffrey Dahmers, or close to it, and if he read something besides the personals in Frontiers, he'd see that Hollywood's depiction of us as weirdos, killers and people to be made fun of only reinforces those beliefs.

We got nowhere. Except on each other's nerves. Never mind that the ultimate message of Paris Is Burning is that these folks may be different, but they're striving for the same thing every soul wants, to be loved and accepted by someone.

Never mind that it's not so much whether a gay character is portrayed as queeny or a lesbian as butch---for these types do exist in real life--but Hollywood's glaring lack of gay characters, no matter how they act, whose lives, dreams, hopes and goals are real, valid and productive, just like Kevin Costner's or Bill Cosby's.

Never mind any of this to Jeff. Basic Instinct was the newest, latest, hottest, sexiest thriller, and he just had to see it.

The conversation left me empty and hopeless. If we can't even get our own people to see the light ...

A few days later I found myself in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the annual college basketball tournament, jawing back and forth with three friends who were on hand to watch UCLA while I was there to root for my hometown Indiana Hoosiers.

“You see the movie JFK? I thought all gays were freaks like that."

The morning of the game, I stepped into the lobby of a roadside pancake house and was greeting by a tall, thin Latino boy selling the Saturday paper. “You play for a team?” he asked eagerly, his dark eyes as big as two moons. (At six-foot-four with black skin, I can't walk a city block without someone asking me if I'm an athlete.)

In a disappointed voice, I said, “No, sorry, I'm just a fan,” and he laughed. I bought a paper and while I waited for a table, we talked about the game, his job, his goal to become a pop singer. His name was Tony and he was 15 (half my age). Inadvertently he taught me the latest teenage slang: “That's sick,” meaning “that's cool.” He was exuberant and talkative, volunteering his life story and asking mine in return.

When breakfast was over, I returned to Tony's post in a secluded corner of the lobby, desirous of another dose of his youthful energy. As we said goodbye, he mentioned that when he became famous, he'd invite me backstage after one of his concerts so we could hobnob with the likes of Madonna.

“Except I don't know about her,” he said pensively. “She's a lesbian and all.”

I prodded innocently, giving him my theory that she was open-minded, if anything, which prompted him to further explain: “That kind of stuff, like gays and stuff, is against everything I stand for.” (News to me that you could stand for anything at 15.)

The lobby was sparsely filled; the only other human not just passing through was a bear. Or rather, a short person dressed in a bear outfit, the restaurant's idea of a promotion gimmick. Bucky was the name stitched across his chest, his big bear head 10 times larger than normal. And he couldn't have been more than five feet away when I informed my newsboy: “I'm gay.”

“What?” Tony uttered with staggering disbelief, and it took a minute or two to convince him I wasn't joking. “You're not gay,” he kept saying. “You couldn't be gay; you're not girlish. We've been talking all this time. You're cool. I didn't even know.”

Which is precisely why I told him.

“Why don't you just get it fixed,” he asked like a concerned friend, “go to a therapist? Tell him you wanna change?”

“It's not a choice,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” he insisted. “You could just go to a doctor or something and say: 'I wanna start liking girls.”

His reaction must have drawn the attention of Bucky the Bear, for he came over and plopped his squat body next to mine. “You're really gay?” Tony asked. For a moment I hesitated, but I couldn't back down in front of the bear.

“You mean to tell me my best friend could be gay?” How would I get him to admit it to me?”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly thankful Bucky was there to witness my lawful interaction with this minor.

“But you don't look gay,” Tony declared.

I tried to explain that all gays didn't look and act any one way, just like all Latinos and blacks didn't look and act any one way. He agreed with me on the Latinos and blacks part, even said he hated it when people expected him to act like a cholo; but the gay end of the deal was impossible for him to swallow.

“You see the movie JFK?” he asked. “I thought all gays were freaks like that. Man, they were doing all kinds of freaky stuff in that.”

Right then I knew I had to make a valiant effort to undo what Oliver Stone and Jim Garrison had done, and felt at that singular moment that if they had included one positively functioning gay character, or made some sort of creative disclaimer acknowledging that for every Kennedy-killing patsy, a hundred “good” gays existed, maybe I wouldn't be trying to convince this kid that I wasn't a freak by mere virtue of my sexual orientation.

I tried telling him gays were just like anybody else, that we were good guys and bad guys, that we were doctors, lawyers, teachers, friends, etc. “You make it sound like you're everywhere,” he said, eyeing me warily.

“That's 'cause we are,” I said.

“Not here in Albuquerque, huh-uh.”

It was about this time that Bucky the Bear gave up his silence. “Gays are everywhere,” he said to the boy. “And they're people just like you.” From underneath the costume came the voice of a 40ish white man with the calm resonance of a school teacher; like a well-rehearsed duo, we spouted off the virtues of not judging people by labels and stereotypes.

Tony debated us every step of the way, regurgitating his homophobia adamantly, proclaiming he'd disown a future child of his that ever “turned gay,” not caring if that child then turned to suicide. But in return, he listened to my side of the story with awe and curiosity, relentless in his adolescent pursuit of the truth.

“You mean to tell me my best friend could be gay?” he asked at one point. “How would I get him to admit it to me?”

“Do you suspect that he might be gay?” I asked.

“Kinda, sometimes,” he reflected. “Certain hints he'll drop, but I'm not sure. Could I just ask him?”

“I bet you go around joking about fags, don't you?” I asked; he fessed up to it with a sheepish laugh. “Well, even if your friend is gay, chances are he wouldn't tell you because he's afraid you wouldn't accept him.”

“I wouldn't,” he said flatly.

“Then you'll lose a friend.”

He shrugged as if to say, So be it; but in his worried face I saw him struggling with that one.

From an adult this kind of attitude would have ignited the angry cords of my soul. But in Tony's big brown eyes I saw a naïve boy grappling with territory he'd never dreamed of, territory that said gays were more than assassination-plotting freaks. He still couldn't get over the fact that he had talked to me for close to an hour and decided I was cool before finding out I was gay.

“I can't believe I told you I'm against it and you still told me,” he said half a dozen times.

“That's because I'm comfortable with who I am and I've got nothing to hide,” I countered.

“That's sick,” he said, using his teenage slang.

“Good sick or bad sick?” I inquired. He shook his head, staring out the window.

“Just astonishing sick.”

For Tony, meeting a tall black dude who he thought played for one of the teams in town and finding out he's gay and not girlish and not a freak was like an earthquake.

“This is really something else,” he said, dumbfounded. “I can't believe I”m going through this.”

He told me he had so many questions now and that maybe he would bring them up in Health and Safety on Monday so that all the kids in school could discuss it. (Yes, the young are that frank. Innocence still exists.) Yet I never got the feeling he was ready to change his homophobic ways, although it was evident that now, because of Bucky the Bear and me, he was going to think.

Before I left the pancake house Bucky wished me good luck. I patted him on his brown-carpeted arm and told him, “Keep educating thew world.” I never got a glimpse of his human face.

Tony was still processing as I parted, so much so that he barely said goodbye. But I walked away feeling that the religious experience called “March Madness” scheduled to take place at the basketball arena that afternoon was senseless in comparison to opening a child's mind concerning gays.

Yet I couldn't help wondering how much impact I'd had on Tony, and if anyone would hear his best friend's cry for help. And what about all the other young “future leaders of the world” who are more likely to be exposed to JFK and Basic Instinct before they get a chance to talk openly and honestly with a gay man or woman? Even if they do come face to face with someone gay, will they be as willing to listen and debate as Tony, or will the images of Hollywood scare them away?

Sometimes I Forget I'm a Nigger

In the spring of 1992, all hell broke lose in LA when a jury acquitted four police officers on trial for the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King. The Los Angeles Riots of 1992 that followed shook Angelenos to the core, including this Angeleno.

While hunkering down in my home, I received a phone call from David Kalmansohn, a most-fantastic editor at Frontiers Newsmagazine, who wanted to know, a) if I was all right, and b) whether or not I wanted to write a piece about the uprising taking place in our city.

At the time I was working on my novel Uprising, which centered around an assassination plot. During the riots, I put it aside, having suddenly lost my appetite for fictional violence.

However, writing about the nonfictional violence happening in our city was a good distraction from watching and waiting to see if it was going to reach my front door. Or window.

Thankfully, the violence never reached my immediate world. Thanks to Mr. Kalmansohn, the following essay was published shortly after the riots in the May 22, 1992 issue of Frontiers Newsmagazine.

Sometimes I Forget I'm a Nigger ...

You know, one of those people with big lips and charcoal skin who are always up to no good, members of a less intelligent race who would sooner stick a gun in your gut before making a positive contribution to the world.

No doubt my memory lapse is due to the fact that, as I evolve with my sexuality, I willingly become more identified with being gay. No doubt it is also because I have achieved a slice of the American Dream, however small: college education, good job, safe dwelling, well-to-do friends.

No doubt it is also due to a desire to suppress pain that goes even deeper than what I have endured as a gay man, for I knew I was black long before I knew I was gay. Even when I bought into society's belief that I should be ashamed of both qualities, I could hide my gayness, but not my blackness.

"Wherever I go, I can't get away from having labels and stereotypes hung around my neck."

All of these things contribute to me forgetting I'm a nigger. But not for long. Something always happens to remind me I am a part of America's most historically feared and hated subculture.

Like when I was a freshman at USC at the dawn of the '80s. Fresh off the boat from the Midwest, bursting with dreams of the all-American college life, I was walking by the Sigma Chi fraternity house late one night during my first week of school when a burly anonymous voice from behind a dark window called me nigger.

Like every time I'm alone in an elevator with a white female and I can feel the tension breathing from her pores and see the fear in her downcast eyes, making me want to say, “Hey, not every black man wants to rape and/or rob you.”

Like in West Hollywood, where many men will cruise anything with a heartbeat, but look right through me because my tan is permanent. It is there where white friends seen out with me have been called “nigger-lover” the next day at the Athletic Club.

It is on Santa Monica Boulevard where pretty boys speeding by in convertibles have shouted racial epithets to me as I strolled down “our” street. And it is in West Hollywood where I have ignored and been ignored by other black gays, each of us internalizing the racism perpetrated against us.

"For every ounce of prejudice hurled my way, my brothers in South Central live it tenfold."

Yet wherever I go, I can't get away from having labels and stereotypes that have little to do with me hung around my neck. Strangers constantly approach me, eagerly asking if I'm an athlete. When I say no, they're disappointed and usually have no further use for interaction, save informing me I should play sports, what with my height and body structure.

What if I want to be a cheerleader? A brain surgeon? A writer? What these people are really saying: the only worthwhile black man in society is the athlete, whose value lies in his ability to entertain with uncanny feats of physicalness.

The stereotyping isn't confined to non-blacks. Recently, outside a local basketball arena, a black cop out to catch scalpers accosted me when, from a distance, he saw two white friends of mine handing me money. Brutishly he warned me about selling tickets to these two as if that were the only possible association between two whites and one black.

To exonerate myself, my friends had to give the cop my full name, then I had to produce ID to prove we all knew one another. Made me feel like a nigger.

Perhaps the ultimate reminder of who I am came in the Rodney King verdict and subsequent riots. For every ounce of prejudice hurled my way, my brothers and sisters in South Central live it tenfold.

"This form of social outcry also exacts a personal toll."

For me the prejudice is somewhat sanitized. In elevators of friendly office buildings. On the clean streets of Boys Town. For most blacks, the disease of racism festers in every cell of their existence in an uglier, suffocating manner.

You grow up in blighted, roach-infested trenches. Your schools do little to prepare you for college. Or life. Your reality of America is not that you can grow up to be anything you want to be. Becoming the president of IBM isn't an option. Neither is being an astronaut at NASA or an executive at Paramount.

Sure, a few have reached these lofty places and live like the Huxtables, but to the boys and girls growing up in the South Centrals of this country, reality is “you're black, you're not wanted here and we're going to keep you in your place in the ghetto.”

Reality is life and death in a war zone created by poverty created by a system that never cared enough about them. Reality is an ingrained fear of the law and police, a fear fueled by a history of the courts literally letting whites get away with murder against blacks.

Given this bleak picture, and given the turn for the worse for minorities under Reagan-Bush, is it any surprise that something snapped when a suburban jury let four cops go even after their crimes had been captured on video? Not to anyone with a finger on the pulse of the poor, tired and hungry. Not to any student of history.

This is what happens when people are oppressed. You can keep them down, kick them and beat them for so long, but eventually they will rise up and say “Enough!” in the only way that seems to get attention: violence. It's history. In 19th-century France. In Colonial America. In hotbeds of dispute all over the world today. It seems to be the law of man.

It was this perverse sense of “I told you so” that danced with the sadness and fear within me as I watched the burning and destruction, neither condemning nor endorsing the mayhem, but understanding that the rioters were really saying, “We want in on the American Dream.”

Even the looters were saying this by their actions, most of them symbolically grabbing something, anything, for free as if taking a spiteful swipe at an America that is constantly pumping their heads full of images of sexy, material wealth always just out of reach.

But this form of social outcry also exacts a personal toll. I think of my barber shop of over 10 years, in the heart of the neighborhood near the rich white bastion known as USC.

On the third day of the riots, as the TV reporter rummaged through the heavily looted strip mall containing that shop, the tears which had been welling up in my eyes for three days finally came cascading down. I cried for Nick, my barber for nearly a decade, who cut my hair for next to nothing when I was a starving Trojan, and from whom you could still get a good haircut and a rambunctious dose of ghetto gossip for only nine bucks.

Twice a month it was my way of keeping in touch with the Indianapolis inner city I knew for the first seven years of my life before my family moved to the 'burbs. Surrounded by the distinctive flavors and rhythms of urban life, I listened to barbers and customers alike going on about a son's baseball game, a friend's newborn baby, Bush vs. Clinton or the Lakers or the Raiders. Nick and his fellow barbers staked their lives on those nine dollar haircuts, working up to 12 hours a day, six days a week. For now, no more.

During the fiercest days of battle, I was struck by how many white people, friends and strangers, told me I had nothing to be worried about: I was safe. As if my property and my body weren't capable of perishing in the random fires and chaotic hail of bullets.

Was there anyone in LA who wasn't scared that the violence and flames would flare up on his or her block? Is there anyone who believes it can't reach his or her backyard the next time?

The riots (and the oppression and racism that caused them) affect us all. The sphere of the subject is so vast and varied that to address all its aspects in a few hundred words is impossible. Still, one overwhelming concept resonates through the smoke: As long as blacks continue to be oppressed, the country will continue to live under a smoldering threat of violence.

And blacks will continue to be oppressed as long as racist attitudes prevail. As along as eager freshmen at USC are called niggers by their classmates. As long as many of the GWMs of West Hollywood discriminate against people of color. As long as the government systematically keeps most blacks in the ghetto. In other words, (to borrow the other King's phrase), as long as we all continue to look at people by the color of their skin and not the content of their character.


POSTSCRIPT 2009: Elderly White Man to Young Black Man: Help!

During the riots, an elderly white man who was in distress in the middle of an intersection cried out to me, pleading for my help as my car idled at the stoplight. I now had a choice: get out, get involved and help the old man, or ignore his pleas in the name of getting home safely before the impending citywide curfew.

Helping the old man meant putting myself at risk, not only from getting out of my car and walking in the middle of a somewhat busy intersection: my black ass doing anything on behalf of a white man in a racially-divided, powder keg of a war zone seemed like a bad idea.

Still, an even worse idea was that of me not helping an elderly man alone and in distress. And what might happen had I not helped. So I got out of my car and helped him push his car to the side of the road. For his distress was not from being attacked by angry black people. His distress was due to car trouble, and he simply needed help getting the huge old clunker out of harm's way until his backup arrived.

As I pushed the car through the intersection, the old white man steering in the driver's seat, images flashed in my mind: black people, white people, cops, whomever, looking at the two of us, misinterpreting the situation and starting another flashpoint of confusion in our racially-divided, powder keg of a war zone.

Fortunately, all remained peaceful. After the elderly white man thanked me, I went on my way, realizing neither one of us had even mentioned the rioting and racial tensions surrounding us.